Alumni Connections

The strength of any department is its connection with its alumni. To
help our alumni keep up to date with all the department activities, we
have established an annual online newsletter, please read on Current
Newsletters and join us on facebook.com/BGSUCOMM and
share your success stories!

Here are updates from a few of our alumni:

David Johnson, class of 2011, earned a Bachelor of Arts in
Communication (BAC) with a career focus in Promotions and Advertising.
He served as an Admissions Advisor at Ohio University for nearly three
years and recently began a new role as the Assistant Director of
Annual Giving at Ohio University.

As Assistant Director of Annual Giving, David strives to increase
financial support for Ohio University's students, faculty, and
programs by reaching out to alumni and friends of the institution
through personal solicitation, donor cultivation, and stewardship. He
uncovers alumni areas of passion for the institution and frequently
discusses making gifts to these areas or starting scholarships for students.

David earned a Master’s degree in Higher Education from Ohio
University in 2014. He loves working for an institution of higher
education (mainly because he never wants to leave college). David says
that he felt very prepared starting graduate school. While some of his
classmates were stressing about using APA format and writing 25+-page
research papers, David realized that his BGSU education prepared him
for that as an undergraduate.

Of the many great things he learned while at BGSU, David says that
his COMM classes taught him the most useful and practical concepts
that he still uses today. Presentation skills, persuasive strategies,
and the importance of relationship-building are just a few that he
uses every day. “You will learn theories and concepts in your
Psychology and Business classes, but your Communication classes will
bring those all together and show you how to actually apply those to
the world in which we live,” assures David.

Joy Harris graduated from BGSU in 2008 with a B.A. in
Communication and minor in History. She currently works for NSK
Americas in Ann Arbor, MI as a Procurement Supplier Development Specialist.

NSK Americas is the USA headquarters for the Japan-based company.
NSK manufactures ball bearings, roller bearings and linear motion
products for the automotive, industrial and agriculture industries.
NSK has offices and manufacturing facilities all over the world --
Japan, China, Mexico, Iowa, Indiana, Brazil, India, UK, and many others.

As a procurement supplier development specialist, she is responsible
for procuring competitive quotations for the seal and sensor
commodity. In addition to obtaining quotations, she works to achieve
cost downs on projects identified in annual and monthly reports. She
is also required to manage my suppliers by evaluating their pricing,
quality and reliability, which requires me to travel to each
supplier’s location as needed.

Procurement calls for Joy to be firm and decisive while being
amicable. It requires her to possess strong negotiation
skills, forecasting abilities, and be a keen listener. With NSK being
a global company, on a daily basis she communicating with her Japanese
team members, as well as global representatives from her suppliers.
The language barrier can be very challenging in that not only is it
hard to understand, it is very easy to interpret tones
incorrectly. Another challenge with working in a global company,
are the cultural differences.

Before NSK, she worked for a company called MTS Seating located in
Temperance, MI. MTS is a manufacturer of banquet and restaurant
seating (that can be found in the BGSU Union). There she worked as a
Sales Coordinator for 4 years. The field of sales also required that
she be a successful communicator.

“Communication has opened a lot of doors for me. The classes I took
at BGSU prepared me by emphasizing that clear, efficient communication
in the work place is very important. It amazes me to this day how
many poor communicators there are in the work force. I believe
communication is the foundation for success and that
many organizations do not place enough emphasis on it.”

Julie Storch majored in Communication and minored in Marketing
and Psychology. She currently works at Flavorseal in Avon, OH as an
Inside Sales Specialist.

Flavorseal is a packaging manufacturing company for the food
processing and food service industry. As a sales specialist in the
food processing division at Flavorseal, Julie is responsible for
maintaining and growing an existing customer base as well as
prospecting through cold calls for the Northwest territory, which
covers 12 states. Aside from responsibilities of external
communication with customers Julie has numerous daily internal
communication with their production, shipping, accounting, and
purchasing departments. Julie works as a coordinator and spokesperson
for her customers to the different departments in her company to
ensure their orders arrive to them in a timely manner. Through her
work, Julie has had the opportunity to travel to Iowa, Missouri,
Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota to meet with her customers
face-to-face and grow her relationship with them and secure future
business for her company.

Julie's communication classes at BGSU were great preparation for her
transition into the workforce by allowing her to grow relationships
with customers and maintain continuous strong communications
internally at her company.

More About Our Alumni

The Department of Communication has over 10,000 alumni across the
nation and globe, serving in a variety of career fields. Many work in
career paths such as advertising and promotions, public relations,
consumer affairs, corporate training, corporate sales, corporate
planning, human resources, crisis management, strategic planning and
communication, development communication, event planning, personnel
management, fundraising, community relations, environmental affairs,
employee relations, media relations, and many other careers where
communication skills are essential.

Graduates with a major in communication move easily into for profit,
nonprofit, and governmental organizations. We maintain a database with
information about our graduates. The exeriences of our alumni provide
ample evidence that majoring in communication is an important basis
for moving onto a productive and profitable career path. For example,
our alumni have established careers working with the Speaker's Bureau
and Pentagon in Washington D.C., the Atlanta Braves, Coca-Cola
Corporation, Mahalo Daily in Los Angeles, WTWH Media/Design World
Magazine, many work in various capacities in education institutions
such as the Ohio University, Loyola University Chicago, University of
Nevada, College of Wooster, Illinois State University or Tallahassee
Community College. We have many who work in various organizations as
CEOs, account executives, attorneys, patent advocates, civic affairs
specialists, government relations specialists, media specialists,
investor specialists, community relations specialists, academic
advisors, spokespeople, researchers, consultants, volunteer
coordinators and other similar capacities.

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